Here is something someone much more brilliant than I wrote. I keep a copy, written in my dear friend’s own hand, in my wallet. I take it out some days so I won’t forget to look for the woman she writes of. She’s still out there, somewhere.
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“Her hair is red, this is the first thing he notices about her. But not red in the sense of auburn, copper, even strawberry. Her hair is the red of cognac in candlelight in a dark cafe, apricot silk in summer sun, dawn’s fain, divine blush of the madonna.
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But even without the hair he could have loved her— with her eyes like diamonds, cool and distant, collecting your glances and overflowing with your reflected light. Precious.
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He smiles the first time he hears her name, for he is a bookish sort, good friends with Homer, with Virgil, has felt the footsteps of ancient gods in his brain. ”Do you have as many secrets as she did?” he asks her one evening, just after dinner, still smelling faintly of steak, bloody and rare; brushes her cheek, redolent of brandy and pears; smiles. ”So many useless truths?”
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She smiles simply at him, tilts her chin. ”Truths are always useless.” She keeps her cigarettes in a silver case; when she slips one out from its neat line of fellows from under their pressing silver thumb, clasps it between her lips delicately like delicious fruit, flicks her lighter casually into a lonely flame, he thinks it is the most beautiful thing he has ever seen. He strokes a thumb down her throat; she has a spattering of freckles along her jaw, creeping tiptoe to hide behind her scarf. ”People never listen anyway,” she tells him through blue smoke and streetlamps, catching at his hand.
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She is the most exquisite thing he has ever known. He leans close, presses a kiss to her temple, to more freckles, these a precise constellation, a starburst, a song.
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“Can I walk you home?” Anything to stay with her a bit longer. He has never met anyone more enchanting, with her silver cigarette case and her sanguine hair, her skin all aglow as if she’s swallowed the moon.
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She laughs. ”You won’t believe my answers anyway,” and hope is so heavy in his heart it hurts, he feels bruised. She cups his face for brief moments in her hands, her hair a storm around her shoulders, a small smile on her lips. He feels somehow blessed by those hands, that touch. .
“Can I see you again, then?” It’s clear she would rather he not walk with her, the man is a student of history enough to read that much, in a woman’s eyes. He resolves, for whatever reason, to do the opposite of whatever she tells him, whatever she says, a fluttering of a feeling very like fear and not unlike awe falling all over itself in his chest. He reaches up to cover her hand with his, waiting for her answer.
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But she says nothing, merely smiles, squeezes his hand gently, trails her fingertips down his freckless skin. When she walks away, her eyes are sad and silver, leaving him stranded in a streetlight pool, drowning in the golden air.”
